


"Behind the scenes in SI"

by SrebrnaFH



Series: Time enough to just live [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Internship, Interview, Irondad, Precious Peter Parker, Sassy Peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 12:57:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20228227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SrebrnaFH/pseuds/SrebrnaFH
Summary: Peter finally does the interview and the photoshoot.Tony sits in and supports him.





	"Behind the scenes in SI"

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, so the interview.  
I tried to find some fitting photos of T.H., but had to resort to the descriptions only ;(

June 6th, 2024

Transcript of recording

Status: 1st DRAFT, to be confirmed

_Notes by G.S._

P. B. Parker

Stark Industries

_Legal note: PP is underage (17, blipped), so the interview was overseen by his direct superior in the company._

_All PP's answers are to be transcribed and must be approved for publishing by said superior, tony@si.com._

_[recording start]_

Young Business: Today we are talking to Peter Parker, a young engineering and management intern at Stark Industries. The weather is beautiful, the sky is perfectly unclouded and we find ourselves on the roof of the Stark Industries, in the unexpected urban garden over the sea of concrete. We are surrounded by containers of greenery and a number of slowly-moving solar panels. Amongst this surprising explosion of nature and sustainable energy, Peter looks like he is right at home.

Peter Parker: I suppose I am. At home, I mean. I'm up here a lot.

YB: It is very nice here, and there are tables and chairs and even what looks like a working corner — anyone else up here often? Other employees?

PP: Whoever wants to. I mostly come here to work on the panels and in the evening, to get some air, take a break... Some people use this place for lunch. Access is not restricted, apart from the other end of the building, where we have the helipad.

YB: I suppose we will start with the question you must hear very often - how does a highschooler land such a prestigious internship? We know that the rates of acceptance to SI are daunting, and that is for college graduates. You are the youngest intern in the history of SI.

PP: I lucked out. Complete coincidence. I was creating some tech based on SI parts and selling it to people. Mr Stark noticed it, tracked me down and contacted me to learn what it was that I did. He was pretty surprised to learn I was fifteen...

Tony Stark: Fourteen.

PP: Nearly fifteen.

TS: Still fourteen.

PP: Yeah, whatever. So at first he freaked out...

TS: Kid.

PP: You totally did. Then he offered me the internship, just to make sure I don't blow myself up by accident.

TS: To have better oversight over his ideas.

PP: And has kept complaining about his greying hair ever since.

TS: Because he still tries to blow himself up on regular basis.

PP: MISTER STARK!

TS: Go on, kid. I'm not going to butt in again.

_Note: Peter is standing with his arms crossed on his chest, looking at his "mentor" with a doubting smile. Photo_03 shows him in profile. **Alison, check out that biceps and give me a good caption for that photo.**_

PP: As if. Anyway, Mr Stark made me an offer I could hardly afford to refuse, simple as that.

YB: And what did you gain from that offer?

PP: Access to all the newest tech in SI, all the components and tools I need. Labs, workshops, parts and processing power, and, well, personal mentoring and guidance.

_Note: THAT SMILE see Photo_04...!!! **Alison, we need something catchy here.**_

YB: And your side of the bargain?

PP: Apart from the tasks given to me directly by Mr or Mrs Stark, I am expected to come up with new things or improvements and then I have to be able to defend my ideas, code, design and formulae in front of my internship supervisor. I have to be able to explain the reasoning and research methods used and to prove the potential improvement ratio or, if change is less technical, the marketing potential.

TS: Even if sometimes he had to do it two or three times, because the generation gap makes it hard for me to understand all the cultural references.

PP: You aren't _that _bad. Well, for a guy who must have had a pet dinosaur when he was a kid.

TS: You are seriously asking for a lab ban, kiddo.

PP: Mrs Stark will find me a desk in her office if you lock me out. And she allows me to listen to the music I like when I work...!

TS: Well, we can't have that. It's bad enough with her poaching on my grounds already.

YB: This segues nicely to our next question...

PP: Oh, my.

YB: What exactly _are_ you doing being a... a what, a shared intern? How does it work? Who is your boss, the CEO or the CTO?

PP: Um.

_Note: the way he bites his lip and looks at Stark is too cute for words. Natalie, check if you have a good photo of this one. If we don't, try to get a good capture from the recording._

TS: Go on, Pete. This part isn't secret.

PP: Mrs Stark decided I needed a "more normal" workplace experience. Like, a desk, a phone, office-like tasks to do, the whole thing with regular duties. She calls it 'rescuing me' from the lab. I mostly accompany her to meetings, take minutes, make sure Mr Stark is there for the key ones. Um...

_Note: If I catch him blinking like this one more time on this recording, I'll make a compilation video and live off the ad revenues on Youtube!_

TS: She uses him to blackmail me into attending meetings. "Tony, Peter simply can't present this prototype all by himself!", then I go and it turns out he does it perfectly. I mostly spend time on them reading on my phone anyway...

PP: Now I feel all hurt that you aren't paying attention to the presentations I am sweating over. If I see you with your phone again, I'll tattle.

_Note: The Stark Glare. Anyone else would have turned to ash, the kid just rolls his eyes._

YB: So you attend all kinds of meetings that Mrs Stark conducts?

PP: Anything she decides she needs me to sit in on. Usually as kind of second set of eyes. Backup detail tracker, this kind of thing. Mostly the afternoon ones, of course, at least until the summer vacation.

_Photo_05 shows Peter in a slim-cut three-piece blue suit and very classical white shirt, no tie. It seems the outfit is not by any of the world-known brands, but by a small, by-recommendation-only tailor shop. Mr Stark is very close-mouthed regarding the specific location of that venue._

_Photo_06 is a more casual set, the suit jacket paired with a well-fitted t-shirt._

_Note: VERY well-fitted. **Alison, a snappy caption here. Something about the distraction in the workplace, just don't make it sound too obvious.**_

YB: You come into contact with the big business part of the SI, but what about the tech? Do you work on things that are in any way groundbreaking?

_Note: The look Peter gives Mr Stark is somewhat anxious, but the great engineer only nods. Find a screen cap for that and clean it up nicely. It will go on the webpage as part of the video montage._

PP: I work on whatever Mr Stark assigns me. Including Iron Man tech and... Mr Stark?

TS: Go on, kid. Just don't go into technical details.

PP: Well...

_Note: Alison! He is adorable. I want to take him home and feed him cookies._

PP: Falcon's — well, Captain America's — wings. T-the latest version. These are mine. And-and basically everything Spider-Man uses, apart from the suit itself. The web-shooters, the paragliders, the... well, not sure what he had used in public, but all his accessories were built by me.

TS: And you've designed the new web fluid composition.

PP: Well, that was a side project. And then, well, I work on, well, fiddly bits for the Iron Man suit. When Mr Stark programs the nanites, I add specific subroutines to be integrated, usually ones that collect and feed us back data about energy usage fluctuations. And I help test the Iron Man weapons - we mostly shoot a lot of them at a variety of materials to check what burns what the best. From the purely manual tasks, I work on the detailed elements on the non-nanite suits. Outside of Mr Stark's workshop, I worked on the clean energy solutions team that creates batteries and power plants, including these panels around us here.

YB: How much power do they produce?

PP: Well, these don't really produce a lot of power - not in the conventional sense - they are here to heat water. We've calculated—

TS: You've calculated.

PP: _We've calculated._

TS: Nope. You've calculated.

_Note: Peter sighs. Deeply. He looks at Stark with pursed lips. Stark seems not to notice._

PP: I've calculated the balance that gives the optimal technically reasonable result. Since the best photovoltaics currently in use have a limited effectiveness, we've decided to go with a... well, mixed approach. What you see here is a combination of photo cells and good old water heating setup. With this new matte black coating on the pipes and the way the panels are constructed, the water is heated to temperatures much over anything a human being would consider comfortable. This water - around 122 degrees - is then transported down to the reclamation point, where the heat is caught and converted into electricity - partially, of course. Then the water is added to the general system and provides a significant fraction of the building's hot water. The power input is much smaller per unit than in a full-surface photocell, but the cells themselves are of a new construction and so more effective at converting solar energy to electricity than standard now used in most constructions. You will notice that while the panel itself is warm on the top, the bottom surface is mostly cool. All the reflective layers inside the panel work towards better heating of the water and less energy loss. Keeping the top of the building slightly shaded, but that's a negligible difference at this point.

_Photo_07, Peter in casual, "lab" clothes. Red ankle-high boots, distressed blue jeans and a slightly loose, deep necklined t-shirt, a pair of blue-tinted goggles keeping his curls out of the way and a stylus loosely held in his hand._

_Note: Young mad scientist apprentice. Yum!_

PP: This is Mr Stark's lab. That corner — the desk and workbench there — is mine, this is the door to the testing area, the other side is the break room. This is where I spend most of my time at SI, unless Mrs Stark kidnaps me. Hm...

TS: Show them the bubble robot.

PP: Mr Stark! Yeah. BB8. I've built a miniaturised version. Now I'm working on a reasonable AI to run it. I want it to work better than the official merch, with all these fake pseudo AIs. They are basically Furby, just, well, refurbished. I want to make myself an actually responsive unit with learning capabilities.

YB: Everyone would like to have one, I suppose.

PP: Well, there won't be many copies. I don't want LucasArts getting all huffy about copyright. I would make maybe one or two more, just for my own use or, whatever, for my friends.

TS: (_Note: quietly_) I'll buy them if they try.

PP: Mr Stark, they are in Disney now.

TS: I can still buy them. The whole thing.

PP: Mr Stark...!

TS: Just make Morrie another one of these for her next birthday and I will consider making an appointment with their PR and find the way to buy the whole company, _including_ Star Wars franchise.

_Note: The way Peter looks in this photo is absolutely phenomenal. And I mean it. Congrats to the photog._

_Photo_08: Peter in dress trousers and deep blue shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, two top buttons undone, eyes covered by large blue-tinted glasses (logo of Stark Tech etched in delicate silver letters on the side), holding a hologram blueprint between his outstretched hands._

PP: Would that make Morgan a Disney Princess?

TS: She is a Stark Princess already, and that is way, way better.

_Note: Some more eyelash fluttering. That boy will be an envy of all girls. And he does this without any mascara._

PP: Anyway. I have an old attempt at making an R2D2, which is probably what many fans start with, but the rolling element of BB8 was much more interesting, so R2 was not finished and is kind of... Well, he is good at bringing tools, just not always able to work out which is which. Since we are giving him orders aloud, this may be a case of misinterpretation of spoken language, and while I was working on speech recognition engine, I got sucked into another thing...

TS: Which meant the newest StarkPhone is not getting the upgraded speech recognition assistant in the current version, because _someone_ decided that they prefer to work on word usage heatmaps for social media rather than...

PP: Mr Stark! I told you it was just a temporary delay...!

TS: Three weeks of clicking through tumblr. Three weeks. Quoting memes. Counting tag usage. Cursing about lousy search functionality. Counting word usage in logins. Aloud.

PP: But...!

TS: And then he build a real-time language register adjusting text writing engine. As in, a talkbot that speaks gen Z. This one will be coming as an update to all the current Stark Phones next month.

_Note: Photo_11: Peter at his workstation, leaning back on his elbows, looking at Tony Stark with wide eyes. Not sure if we should include this one, but if anyone even needs an illustration to a "worshipful adoration" entry in a dictionary, we're all set._

YB: The workshop - or is it a lab? - where Stark and Parker work on their design is a mix of a state-of-art holographic imagery and old-fashioned metalworking tools. There is an anvil, a jigsaw table, several different types of laser cutters, a kiln, a factory-size 3D printer, what looks like a sewing machine and a long shelf of smaller tools, including several mini-drills and a box of watchmaker's screwdrivers. Peter, what exactly do you use all of this for?

PP: That depends, I guess? I mean, every tool here has been used at least once by one of us. We both use the holoblueprints, for sure. The anvil and all the oldtimey blacksmith stuff is Mr Stark's. Jigsaw is mostly mine. Well, sewing machine was brought in for me, but both of us use it for prototyping certain parts of the suits, just to have a backup of the 3D modelling, in case we calculate something wrong. Doesn't happen often, but... Anyway, it's also faster to stitch the model together and put it on than to print each time a new full model. What else... The kiln was mostly for kind of a private project, but we use it sometimes to test heat resistance of materials proposed by the labs downstairs—"

YB: What was the private project, if you don't mind me asking?

_Note: Stark smiles and nods whenever Peter turns to him for confirmation, but it's obvious that there is a lot of rather intensely confidential work being done in that particular room. Write a comment to the effect and have it approved by Stark._

TS: He's gone through glassworking phase. Part of it went into the creation of the panels on the roof and part into gifts for the most important women in his life.

PP: MR STARK...! Seriously...!

YB: And what about the... the marble run there?

PP: Oh, this was just a test whether we can construct something reasonably precise with only materials available on mass market. It's corrugated cardboard, cut with a scalpel and a box knife, glued with a hot glue gun. It's not _very_ precise, but good enough. And it's a project that grows, when we are bored or can't work something out. Mr Stark usually draws things when he is stuck, I build stuff like this. Helps me think. And, if it's repeatable, it goes later into the science sets that SI distributes to schools.

YB: There is some kind of wooden construction here, too. And some LEGOs?

PP: Yep. I've also built a pull-back car and several other toys, just as an exercise in detailed metalworking.

_Photo_27: A display cabinet of a variety of miniature toys, including a wooden windmill, a spider robot and a few cars._

YB: Most interns spend limited time with one company and they work on a specific project or two in the duration. Your situation in Stark Industries seems to be not that conventional. Can you tell us more about it?

PP: I'm afraid that for legal reasons I can't go into details here, but...

TS: Peter is too young to be fully employed and the internship keeps the conditions of his presence in the company fair to him and balanced against his schoolwork. The main project he is working on is more of a continued improvement thing than a specific one-off. I wanted him to be involved with an actual product that the company is aiming to release to the market rather than some made-up task that would be filed under 'intern work' and never be seen again. Wasting all that brainpower would be a crime.

PP: But, just like every other intern, I have to write monthly reports on what I've done, listing all the possible suggestions for the projects I work on. Although, they are anyway filed with Mr Stark and Mrs Stark, who already know what I'm doing.

TS: Pepper says it's good for character.

PP: It helps me organise my work and to track down any unfinished task I might have started and left undone because of _someone_ interrupting me.

TS: ...and she managed to convince him, too. That's why she is the CEO.

YB: Do you plan to work for SI in the future then, Peter? How long will your internship take? How long has it been, in fact?

TS: This part is confidential, confidential and confidential. Peter has been with us long enough to establish himself as a reliable and dependable part of the team, the internship will continue for as long as he, his legal guardian, Pepper and I agree on it and his future career is yet to be determined.

_Photo_31: Tony Stark over his working bench in a faded Metallica T-shirt, working on a circuit board with a soldering iron; Peter Parker on the other side of the table, in a pair of khakis and a tan polo shirt, holding end pieces of a digital multitester to the wires coming from the same board._

_Photo_33: Peter Parker reaffixing his tie in front of a mirror._

_Photo_36: Peter Parker and Pepper Stark in one of the board meetings, Peter presenting a schematic and predicted sales graph._

_Photo_38: Pepper Stark in her office, dictating, Peter Parker typing the notes._

_Photo_42: Peter Parker, in a light grey blazer and peacock-blue t-shirt, sitting on the ledge of the building roof, watching the sunset over New York._

TS: Step away from that ledge, young man, or I will call your aunt.

PP: You're more afraid of her than I am.

TS: That's precisely why I have to call her.

PP: You are making this into such a _thing_.

_Photo_44: Peter Parker pushing one of the movable plant arrangements on the roof._

YB: Besides going to school and working at a rather prestigious internship here, you also seem to be maintaining an impressive physical form, Peter. What is your recipe for success?

PP: Yh. I don't have one, I'm afraid. By myself, I'm a rather fast-food eating, stay-until-two-am-in-the-lab kind of person. Mr Stark is kind enough to kick me mercilessly out when I start seeing double and Mrs Stark makes sure I take a break for something to eat in the afternoon. I work out at the gym upstairs, too, and I've started taking martial arts lessons from—

TS: That's one of the classified parts, actually.

PP: Um. Well. I also take dancing lessons - well, I used to dance in middle school, but recently I've picked it up again. And what else... I take the stairs a lot. I'm too impatient to wait for the lift.

TS: Which is fine if he does it going upstairs, but downstairs he tends to jump over the banister and scare old people to death...

PP: It was only once and I simply haven't noticed you standing there! Anyway, that's the most of it. No special diet, no starving myself - Mr Stark would have my head if I tried, even by accident - and a lot of physical effort that goes into my normal everyday work, like welding, carrying raw materials, laying in the pipes and so on.

TS: Most of the installation on the roof was done by Peter with scant help from our bots and two other interns.

YB: So... if someone asked you how much you can bench press?

PP: No idea, frankly. Never measured myself like this.

YB: Very well then, but we will be curious to learn, should you ever try. Now then — smart, fit, ambitious — what can you tell us for the ending note?

PP: I don't have any special motto to quote for you, I'm afraid. But, should someone wish to listen to advice from a guy who hasn't graduated high school yet - whatever you do in life, own it. Your bads, your goods, your weaknesses and your strengths. Admit them to yourself and be honest with yourself about them. This is the only way to improve. And listen to your elders. I don't mean you have to obey them, not in the slightest. But listen to them, from time to time.

TS: May I remind you, young man, this whole interview has to be reviewed by me. I will see if I allow this last thing to be printed at all.

PP: You will. You were the one who gave me that advice...!

TS: And that's the gratitude I get for it...!

_Photo_48: Peter, in his lab clothes, goggles and large protective gloves, holding a small hammer and a piece of Spider-Man's costume. The decorations on the wall behind him include an old X-Files poster "The truth is out there" (with a post-it note saying "and we'll find it! —TS"), an original Jurassic Park movie poster (another post-it: "don't even think of it, kid! —TS") and a large print of the Babylon 5 Starfury blueprint (post-it here: "plans for 2025 —TS")_

YB: Thank you, Peter, for this interview. And thank you so much for the opportunity to talk to Peter, Mr Stark. Any closing words from you? How do you feel about employing this young kid, from the perspective of what, two years of work now?

TS: I'm very happy that I found him when I did and that I managed to convince him to work for me. I'd be terribly unhappy if I'd let him slip through my fingers and get himself employed at OsCorp or Pym Tech. Or, I shudder to think, Hammer Tech. He is a perfect addition to the team and I am very hopeful for all the improvements that he had made to our products ever since he began to work on something else than the superhero side of the things.

YB: Thank you both again.

PP: It was a pleasure.

TS: That's all Pepper's influence, I swear...

_[recording end]_


End file.
